


The Summer Cat

by red_camellia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Cat, Child Harry Potter, Fluff, Gen, Harry Potter - Freeform, Minvera McGonagall as Animagus, Oneshot, Pre-Hogwarts, it's just a little thingy, just sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_camellia/pseuds/red_camellia
Summary: Set before Hogwarts:Summer had always been Harry’s favourite time of the year. The holiday period meant he was no longer stuck in school where no one wanted to look at him and Dudley and his friends could bully him without any chances for him to escape. But there was also another reason Harry enjoyed the summer holidays: a friendly tabby cat that would visit him each summer...





	The Summer Cat

**Author's Note:**

> I always found it hard to believe that Minvera McGonagall would watch the Dursleys for an entire day and after complaining about them to Dumbledore, she would simply accept his decision to leave him alone with that horrible family.

Summer had always been Harry’s favourite time of the year.  
The holiday period meant he was no longer stuck in school where no one wanted to look at him and Dudley and his friends could bully him without any chances for him to escape. During the holidays he would leave the house and play outside by himself. He always had.  
Other parents would have never let their children play on their own so far from the house at that age. In fact, Harry had already played outside alone when in kindergarten. But Petunia and Vernon could not have cared less, maybe they had half heartily hoped he would disappear. That’s how it had always been like.

But Harry was not entirely alone when he wandered off to distant playgrounds or fields to play. Ever since he had wandered off on his own for the first time (when he had been around 5 years old), there had always been a cat around. Harry didn’t know to whom this cat belonged or whether it was just a stray cat – though it looked too well-groomed to be one. But it would just follow him around and watch him play on his own, it however did not run away when he approached it for the first time.  
Harry and the cat soon became good friends. Harry knew well that cats couldn’t understand humans but he still told the cat about his day and the cat would listen patiently while letting Harry scratch its ears. Somehow he felt that this specific cat could understand him very well.

In the summer when Harry had turned 6, he was sitting at an abandoned playground together with the cat. Harry picked up a thin twig and attached a piece of old cloth he had found to it and let the cat chase after the cloth that he waggled around. At first the cat had seemed hesitant to play that little game, only following the cloth with its eyes but then Harry had apologised:

      “I’m sorry. It’s not really a great toy, is it? I don’t have any. Dudley always gets the toys and even if he doesn’t want them anymore he won’t give them to me. It must be a  
       boring toy for you, right?” Harry said with a sigh.

The cat turned its pretty head and the dark eyes looked sternly at him. What a strange expression for a cat!  
Harry blinked surprised. Then the cat jumped forward and disappeared between the bushes, making hardly any sound with her soft paws. Harry got up.

     “Hey! Wait… no, come back”, he said and his face fell.

The cat must have gotten really annoyed by his stupid little game. Harry sighed and picked up the twig, the cloth attached to it loosened and fell to the ground. He sat at the sand box and at first drew random circles into the rough sand. But then he remembered the particularly strange dream he had quite often these days. A flying motorcycle.  
Harry wasn’t very skilled in arts but he was still quite absorbed in trying to draw the motorcycle from his dream so he didn’t even notice the cat returning.  
Only when there was a soft meow and something bumped against Harry’s foot, he turned his head and saw the cat.

     “Oh hi”, he said surprised. “You are back?”

She meowed again and then Harry looked down at her paw that was pushing something against his shoe. It was a small colourful bottle. Harry picked it up and saw that it was a bottle with soap bubbles. For a moment Harry wondered whether the cat had understood him when he had told it that he had no toys to play with. He unscrewed the top which was a bit sticky and pulled out the Bubble wand. The cat watched him with stern eyes, it tilted its head and watched Harry softly blowing and producing several shimmering bubbles that rose into the air and floated around them, carried by a gentle breeze. Harry couldn’t help but smile at the rainbow colours that shimmered in the bubbles. He dipped the Bubble wand back into the bottle and blew again, a little lower this time so they danced around the cat and when a few bubbles hit the cat’s face, it sneezed and tried to burst the next few bubbles with its paws. Harry laughed and let the cat burst a few more bubbles.

 

Somehow the cat seemed to know when Harry’s summer holidays started because it was waiting for him at the same spot near a pedestrian subway each summer. Then they would walk together around for a while and settle down at an empty playground or sit in the shadow of a tree on a field.  
Ever since Harry had told the cat that he had no toys, the cat would bring little toys and gifts for Harry. After the soap bubbles she – Harry had decided that the cat was female – brought him sidewalk chalk, a soccer ball and marbles.  
Everything she brought was used and battered. Harry hoped that the cat hadn’t stolen the things but the things seemed to be just as unwanted as Harry felt. He enjoyed the little gifts she brought immensely. With the sidewalk chalk he drew a picture of the cat while she watched and he tried drawing that motorcycle again. He also used a lot of green because somehow in his dreams there was often a green light that would fill his mind. The cat’s reaction to that picture was however very strange as soon as Harry had told her what the pictures showed, she arched her back and then left quickly.  
Harry was by then absolutely sure that the cat could understand him.

Then just in time for his 10th birthday the cat was waiting for him again near the pedestrian subway. She had a stuffed toy, a teddy bear but unlike the other things it seemed to be completely new. She meowed and Harry picked it up.

    “That’s for me? Where did you get that? It looks so new”, Harry called.

The stuffed toy was wonderfully soft. It was the first gift he would not hide in the park so he could play with it and not worry that Dudley would take it from him or destroy it. He would definitely take the teddy bear home with him. Maybe he was a little too old for stuffed toys, Dudley would surely say that, but Harry liked the soft bear.

     “Thank you”, he said happily to the cat which meowed.

This summer, the summer in which Harry turned ten, the cat did not spend as much time with Harry as usual. She left earlier in August and no matter how long Harry waited near the pedestrian walk for the rest of August, she did not return. But Harry carried the stuffed animal with him everywhere he went, he could easily hide it under the overly large T-Shirt from Dudley, he could probably even have stuffed it into the pocket of his pants that’s how large they were.  
But when the summer came to an end, he hid it well in the cupboard under the stairs. He hugged the stuffed toy at night or thoughtfully played with the teddy bear thinking of the cat. He hoped that nothing had happened to her and that she was alright. He had walked around their neighbourhood looking for her but had not found a sign of the cat.

So the start into the schoolyear was rather depressing and Harry was gloomy for a long time. The sidewalk chalk was already used up by now and so were the soap bubbles. It was no fun playing with the soccer ball or the marbles alone. And during school time he was too worried that Dudley might find his little gifts from the cat and take them from him. So they stayed well hidden in the bushes of a distant playground. Harry had stored them in a small box he had found during his walks with the cat, the box kept them safe from the rain that was now pouring down on England.  
September arrived with a cold wind and cloudy skies. Harry thought of the next summer and hoped he would see the cat again. But to his usual happiness when he thought of the cat a new anxiety mixed in, what if the cat didn’t return?

Then, Harry couldn’t have known that he would see the cat again. Much more often than before. It would only be two years later however when he would see that tabby cat with the stern eyes and the unusual markings around her eyes on the desk of the Transfigurations classroom in Hogwarts again.


End file.
